http://www.btimes.com.my/Current_News/BTIMES/articles/buku/Article/
Of oil palm, douches, insects and Tamil songs
By Ooi Tee Ching
Published: 2008/12/13
YOU can always tell a planter's hands. They are big, calloused, wrinkled and very, very strong.
When I first shook hands with Datuk Leslie Davidson, a 77-year-old former planter, I was left with numb fingers before blood flowed into my right hand.
In an interview with Davidson and Mahbob Abdullah, his friend and former subordinate, both talked about their upcoming books.
Scheduled to be launched in early 2009, the books tell of their amusing and poignant experiences as planters in the tropics between the 1950s and the 1980s.
Davidson was also in Kuala Lumpur to receive the Merdeka Award from Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi for his outstanding contribution to Malaysian people.
The Merdeka Award, a Petronas initiative co-founded with ExxonMobil and Shell, came with a trophy, certificate and RM500,000 cash.
Davidson's contribution could be attributed to efforts 30 years ago when he initiated efforts to get weevils, insects from Cameroon, to pollinate oil palm trees in Malaysia. Since then, the oil palm trees have been merrily producing more fruit bunches, making Malaysia the world's biggest palm oil exporter.
As Davidson sat himself down beside Mahbob, he said, "the Merdeka Award is actually a team effort".
I stole a glance at Mahbob. "My boss is right. Maybe the award money should be divided among team members, too," he said, and laughed, "there were thousands of us".
In chapter 10 of Mahbob's book titled "Planters Tales" and chapter 37 of Davidson's "East of Kinabalu", they tell how oil palm companies had to spend a lot of money to hire hundreds of workers just to manually harvest pollens from male flowers of oil palm trees to pollinate female flowers.
Teams of workers patrolled the estate daily searching for male flowers to collect the pollens. This was then issued to other teams who went around pollinating every receptive female flowers with hand puffers.
"Ironically, by trial and error, we found the ideal instrument for this delicate operation to be vaginal douches," he said.
When Davidson submitted orders for vaginal douches, Unilever headquarters in London was very surprised and immediately questioned if he was carrying out birth control programmes among his estate workers.
Davidson promptly replied, "Oh, quite the contrary, we're actually trying to increase fertility rates among the trees to get them bear more fruits".
While top management approved of the orders, Davidson was constantly reminded that Sabah estates' oil palm yields were lower than in Johor and Cameroon.
Undeterred and unconvinced by textbook knowledge which claimed that palm fruits were wind-pollinated and that heavy rain washes pollen away, Davidson arranged for more research to prove that pollination in West Africa was largely due to weevils which were not found in Malaysia.
Under Davidson's instruction, Dr Kang Siew Ming, Zam Karim, Dr Tay Eong Beok and Mahbob went to Cameroon to assess the work of Dr Rahman Anwar Syed, the entomologist who was assigned to study oil palm pollination by insects in Africa, especially the Elaieidobius kamerunicus specie.
"It ended up with the two ladies Dr Kang and Zam climbing the oil palm trees," Mahbob said.
Asked what he and and Dr Tay did while the ladies were up on the trees, Mahbob replied, "we stood underneath and made sure that they didn't fall down".
Jokes aside, Mahbob is most probably remembered among members of East Malaysia Planters Association for being the very persuasive money collector for the RM2 million weevils project.
The Unilever Group was the first to pay but Sabah Land Development Board was the biggest contributor.
Incidentally, the estates that Davidson and Mahbob used to work and live in Johor and Sabah are now owned by IOI Corp Bhd. To this day, the almost 70-year-old IOI Group executive chairman Tan Sri Lee Shin Cheng still makes his regular rounds at these estates.
Lee's talent in serenading Tamil songs to his oil palm trees may seem surprising to many but it reflected Incorporated Society of Planters (ISP) requirement that all planters must be proficient in commonly-used languages at the estates.
Davidson recalled preparing for the Malay and Hakka language tests almost 60 years ago. At that time, the ISP examiner said, "You will find Hakka very useful in North Borneo," and asked, "Nyi thuk-ko-kai shu, han ki-tet mau? (Do you still remember your studies?)"
Davidson replied, "Yit pan ki-tet, yit pan mong-ki liau. (Half remember, half forgotten.)
The examiner liked what he heard and Davidson passed the Hakka test with flying colours.
Mahbob was also lucky. In his second book entitled "Planter Upriver", Mahbob told how he was slow to start learning Tamil but eventually aced the test.
At that time, Mahbob's contract as an assistant manager at Tanah Merah Estate in Tangkak, Johor, required him to pass the Tamil language test. He found a very patient tutor in Krishnan, an 18-year-old son of a worker. Also, Mahbob's love for Tamil and Hindi movies might have helped.
Asked if he is able to sing Tamil songs, he winked and smiled, "If Tan Sri Lee invites me to his estates, I certainly don't mind a duet".
http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/12/6/business/2710880&sec=business
Merdeka Award winner proud of long plantation career
By ERROL OH
IT has been 17 years after Datuk Leslie Davidson’s retirement as chairman of Unilever’s plantation arm. And twice as many years have passed since he had last worked in an estate in Malaysia. Yet, he remains a passionate admirer and an acute observer of our oil palm industry, albeit from his home in Sussex, England.
When you engage him in a discussion on palm oil issues and developments, be prepared for a deluge of information and opinion. He has plenty to say and often, one idea quickly segues into another. “Go on, keep me to the point,” he urges the interviewer.
Steering the conversation in the right direction is not really an important consideration. With four decades of experience in the business of cultivating oil palm, Davidson, 77, is a storehouse of stories and views. If you had the time, you would want to hear all that he has to share.
Datuk Leslie Davidson
His is a fairly unique perspective. The Scotsman began his career at Unilever Plantations International in 1951 as a trainee planter in Kluang, Johor. Prior to that, he had spent two years in the national service, mostly in Kenya, and that experience kindled Davidson’s yen for adventure.
Neither keen to go back to school nor enthusiastic about being desk-bound, he applied for a job with Unilever, anticipating that he would be sent back to Africa, where the company owned plantations. Instead, he was offered a posting in Malaya. He was not yet 21 and he was on his way to a country in the throes of the Emergency. Because of his age, his mother had to give her written consent before he could take up the appointment. Mrs Davidson agreed to do so only after she had been assured by the Unilever management that her son would be safe.
In the line of fire
In fact, Kluang was a hotbed of communist activity and European planters were among the primary targets. Davidson was essentially a non-combatant in a war zone, although he was provided with some protection. While the insurgency raged on, the possibility of being gunned down by guerillas was very much a part of his life.
One of his most poignant memories was when he learnt the fate of fellow young planter Gerry Tilley, an ambush casualty.
“He came to my house for makan on Sunday. We played with our guns, shooting at cans and stuff. The next morning, I was driving around the estate and somebody said Gerry had been killed just hours ago,” he recalls in an interview with StarBizWeek during his recent trip to Malaysia.
“He was my only close friend at the time. A lot of people died, which is why I’m one of the lucky ones. I could have been lying dead in a ditch in Kluang if I didn’t have a bit of luck.”
But it took more than mere good fortune to keep Davidson on the path that led him to the Kuala Lumpur City Centre on the evening of Nov 24, when Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi presented him with the Merdeka Award.
The award is a big deal. It was created last year by ExxonMobil, Petronas and Shell to commemorate Malaysia’s 50th year of independence. It is considered our version of the Nobel Prize and it comes with RM500,000 cash. Davidson is among the five inaugural recipients. His award is in the Outstanding Contribution to the People of Malaysia category.
It is recognition for the ‘’most worthy candidate who has made an outstanding and substantial contribution to Malaysia or the people of Malaysia, resulting in the significant improvement of the lives or the quality of life of Malaysians’’.
The triumph of weevil
He was judged worthy of the award because of his pivotal role in pushing for the 1981 introduction of an insect native to Africa, Elaeidobius kamerunicus (better known here as the pollinating weevil), to pollinate oil palm in Malaysia. This has allowed oil palm growers in the region to significantly raise productivity and save cost.
Davidson is eager to dispel the notion that the glory is all his. He tries some humour. He tosses off the theory that he was given the award because he is the oldest ex-planter around.
Then, he gets serious. He points out that many people were involved in the studies and the lobbying, stretched over several years, that led to the Government’s approval for the release of the weevil in Malaysia. And he goes beyond that to share credit.
“The development of the oil palm industry is undoubtedly a major story in the history of tropical agriculture. No other crop has been so successful,” he argues.
“When I came in 1951, the total palm oil production in Malaya was 50,000 tonnes. Now, any estate produces that amount. And the total has gone from 50,000 to 16 million tonnes in an astonishingly short period. That’s the most amazing thing. So, yes, I do believe that the award is for the industry.”
Even with his part in the tale of the pollinating weevil, Davidson might not have been a Merdeka Award winner if not for the fact that he is widely acknowledged as one of the plantation industry’s towering figures.
He attained that stature as a pioneer, manager, innovator and fierce defender of the industry, all rolled into one. Among his other achievements was his leadership in building Tungud Estate in Sabah from scratch. The saga started in 1960, when oil palm was a brand new crop to the state.
Today, Sabah is Malaysia’s No.1 palm oil producer.
As the estate manager, he coaxed an oil palm plantation to take root in face of a litany of difficulties – primitive living conditions, malaria, boardroom opposition back in the London headquarters, engineering challenges, annual floods, the occasional episode of shocking violence, pest attacks, and the threat of piracy and the Indonesian Confrontation.
During his time in Sabah, he also befriended the state’s leading personalities such as politicians Tun Datuk Mustapha Datuk Harun and Tun Fuad Stephens.
Sabah stories
Davidson has documented many episodes of his life on this wild frontier in a book, East of Kinabalu, published last year by The Incorporated Society of Planters (ISP). It is a collection of often charming, witty, wistful and insightful anecdotes, and is populated by a gallery of colourful characters.
(A second edition was released recently. The book has been expanded to include eight new chapters that mostly cover Davidson’s years in Kluang.)
He says the book is meant to be an affectionate tribute to his old friends who were involved in the Tungud project. It is not great deeds that he wants to honour.
“It’s what they were, not what they did. I’m just telling it the way I saw it. These are people whom I admired. I’m trying to make known that the industry is not just about people who are singled out for awards,” he explains.
Indeed, apart from his family – wife Olive and daughters Catriona and Fiona soon joined him at the estate, and a third daughter, Mary Anne, was born in Sandakan in 1963 – people like Ibrahim Sulong (“blacksmith, medicine man and sturdy individualist”) and carpenter Kong Miew are key players in Davidson’s life in Sabah.
Plantation consultant and author Mahbob Abdullah once worked under Davidson. In his own book, Planter’s Tales, Mahbob teasingly describes his former boss as “dangerous” when he did not have enough to do. According to Mahbob, Davidson was “brash” and was a man with “many wild ideas”. How does he plead?
“Absolutely guilty,” says Davidson. “I think it’s basically dissatisfaction with what’s going on around me. I’m just a grumbling old banger. It’s a good thing to be dissatisfied.”
It is this state of mind that many times brings us to discoveries and improvements. It definitely works that way for Davidson.
“Let’s think about the oil palm. What a bloody stupid tree it is. Look at coconuts. They shed their fronds, don’t they? Free of charge. You don’t have to cut them off. With the oil palm, you have to spend money cutting off their fronds,” he points out.
“The oil palm doesn’t shed its fruits. The coconut drops its fruits nicely on the ground at your feet. You just pick them up. With the oil palm, you’ve got to cut them off.”
That sets the stage for his chief argument that the oil palm industry should focus on using technology to modify the tree so that it is easier and cheaper to harvest the trees and maintain the estates. And he believes that given the currently weak palm oil prices, now is the time to get back to basics.
Loving people, not palms
Then again, the plantation business is not all yields and ringgit and sen. It is more than likely that more people will remember Davidson for his friendship and warmth to others, than those who identify him as the man who brought the pollinating weevil to this part of the world.
As head of the Unilever plantation business in Malaysia, he stood out among the expatriate managers for refusing to participate in the somewhat exclusive ritual of the Sunday curry lunch.
He always sought interaction with the locals, and learnt enough Malay and Hakka to pass the ISP exams. He thinks this has to do with the fact that he grew up in Scotland during and after World War II. Also, he considers himself “slightly liberal”.
“I wasn’t really colonial-minded. In fact, it was a bit embarrassing sometimes. I admired a lot of the colonial officials. A lonely Englishman out in the jungle running a place in Africa the size of Europe is great, but it was never my attitude.”
As Tungud Estate manager, he oversaw a fast-growing community of many nationalities, races and religions. Towards the end of East of Kinabalu, he wrote that the estate and the other pioneering plantations in Sabah had provided a peaceful haven for thousands who had arrived there to escape poverty and conflicts.
He adds in the book, “I was personally far more proud of the contribution we had made towards this than of any impact we may have had on the agricultural development in the region.”
And he tells StarBizWeek, “I suppose planters are really divided into two – those who are very proud of the palm trees and those who are very interested in the people who look after the palm trees. To me, it was a great privilege to work as a planter because of all these interesting people, all of whom are great individuals.”
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